What happens when you venture into a multiplayer world with the sole purpose of playing a single-player game? In one player's experience, you find a pretty cold reception. Jon Glover chronicles his lonely trek through PlayStation Home.

Rather pitiful in a way, a bleak picture of Home. I sympathise though my gaming experances are nearly always single player and I much prefer it that way. There are two many idiots in the world to make multiplayer games good.

I don't see why the PS3 feels the need to force you to interact with the great unwashed masses of the Internet in order to play a single-player experience. HOME has been seen as a failure since before its launch, and with little content and crowd control it's only attracted the lowliest of the scum, the kind that in Victorian times would be stalking the filthy back-alleys and ogling the prostitutes.

Great article, John Tesh! I laughed heartily at your misfortunes. Mistake #1 was not dressing yourself in mallrat finery and strolling around the virtual promenade making fun of other avatars for their race / sexual orientation / gender / choice in corporate apparel. It's called First Strike, y'know? Mistake # 0.5 was logging on to Home in the first place.

"Unfortunately, I never did. My interactions with other people consisted of me arriving during awkward pauses of conversation while the other parties involved waited for the hulking, disfigured John Tesh lookalike standing within breath mint distance to return to whatever bog he'd lumbered out from."

I laughed so hard a tear formed in my eye. A good read, and a pretty solid example of what Home is as opposed to what it was meant to be.

I've seen a couple of furries wandering around home.I don't want to know where they got the costumes.

Home was a drag when it started out but it is getting more interesting. There's more game spaces with things to do and less pathetic virgins harassing every female avatar (which is probably an old pervert 85% of the time).

This unfortunate trip through Home you've taken the time to write and share with us makes me wonder what would happen to an avatar in Home if it had a wheel chair. You see people with strange avatars on Xbox Live and think..."That's Awesome!"...or..."I wish I though of that first!"...not realizing that the person who created the avatar doesn't give a shit what you think of it and accepts your praise when sent to him or her when such praise is probably sarcastic anyway.

As you've described on Home its like your avatar was a couple of bolts and a huge forehead stitch away from being chased with pitchforks and torches (if such items could be downloaded and held by home avatars). Good luck in the future Jonathan Glover....hmm....that would make a good movie title.

This is the curse of humanity.the few that divide the many.Those people who insult because they lack a reason.and a reason why I stay away from things like the PS3 and home/Second life.I'll stick to my games.and The Escapist.

I logged on to PS3's Home and played an hour using the drawers to create walls and rooms. I never realized that you could leave that studio. When you leave can you drag the stuff you made in your studio outside?

Wow... my experiences with Home have never been that bad. The only time I played it for any length of time was when I powered through the entire Xi game like the day before it stopped. I have logged on periodically to see if they have added anymore (free) content. No luck this far.BTW, you press "triangle" to talk. ;)

Just like any online social atmosphere, in Playstation Home you are going to have a lot of douchebags dragging their knuckles whilst sprouting hate and general immaturity. Not to mention the sexual harassment of female avatars. however I have made a few Bowling buddies. If only they'd allow for bowling teams and leagues...

Yes, well. That's pretty much what I expected. I had high expectations of Home when I first heard about it, but I lost interest. I haven't even logged in except to see if I got my inFamous costume from beating the demo.

I'd imagine that to use Home properly you'd have to get one of those micro-keyboard attachments to talk to people properly. Then, really if I just want to chatter I can just do it through an MMO or message boards like this one with the same amount of effort. Over a period of time they might expand it into something worthwhile, but I don't think Sony really had the guts to do it.

Originally I believe Home was supposed to be a lot like Second Life with user generated content, but they decided to scrap that idea. I remember hearing it described as "like second life but without the naked people in the sky" but to do that would require a level of active regulation and content review that they probably didn't want to go through. Besides, how do you sell content if people can make it themselves?

Also ironically, while I never did Second Life, it was the sex dungeons and such that actually gave it personality. Free expression at it's finest (and most disturbing) when you get down to it. While there was plenty for sites like Something Awful to mock, I also saw some things posted here and there that were truely inspiring, I also thought the whole "Destroy TV" concept was pretty original and see some potential for that technology to be used in MMORPGs and such to an extent. Truthfully if I ever hit a lottery jackpot and try and fund my own MMORPG I'd definatly be interested in trying to get ahold of these people and perhaps buy their code. Of course a MMORPG would be second on my list after the "Horror Movie Sandbox Game" I have mentioned wanting to make before. ;)

As far as homophobia, misogynism, and other things all I can say is that at least they have free speech. Mixed opinions on the subject matter aside, it does seem like it hasn't been forcibly morphed into another sterile, politically correct enviroment.

as somewhat of a recluse, i thought what a great idea of having somewhere to go and chat to people from around the world without leaving the comfort of your own home..... shows how much i know.

during my annoying not quite a walk and not quite a run travels in home i've been verbally abused, threatened, teased and have recieved personal messages from people i don't even know abusing, threatening and teasing me. now i'm not crying or whinging about it, i just took it on the chin (probably not as big as john tesh's chin), put them on my block list and got on with the task at hand, wandering aimlessly around a virtual world that was becoming less and less enjoyable.

the only shining glorious moment of playstation home was the extremely rare occasion someone was decent enough to enter into a civil conversation and this person is now a friend i communicate with regularly. i think this is really the only reason i haven't deleted all traces of home from my ps3 is maybe, just maybe, one day someone else will have the vocabulary to say more that f**k off, f**k you or any other abusive term under the sun.

granted, everyone has different opinions on this subject, some people love it, some people hate it and others just don't really give a damn either way. but one thing is certain, my extremely low expectations of some people have served me well as when they are true to form and behave like total a**holes, i'm rarely surprised.

One is really deep, talking about society and stuff, but I had that feeling before this just reinforced it alittle.

My second is that most, if not all Playstation/Sony Boys/girls(You know who I'm talking about, a Playstation paraphernalia, TV and maybe a laptop/computer are all they have in their "game room", they are all assholes. I also had this feeling before, but I'm always willing to spread my opinipns on wretched Sony.

i had never found anyone having Cyber in any place on the internet (althought once i recieved a PM in a chat from a dude describing how he was going to pull my pantyes with his mouth and saying "woops, wrong user, sorry")

i had never found anyone having Cyber in any place on the internet (althought once i recieved a PM in a chat from a dude describing how he was going to pull my pantyes with his mouth and saying "woops, wrong user, sorry")

Really? You let a few people get to you like that and just give up? You are not a true gamer, my friend. Never let adversary stand in the way of the game. Dominate it...kinda like that guy was to that girl. Except less sexy.

That's the problem with games that allow you to hide behind a pixelated avatar; they are full of idiots. Because you are not speaking to a person face to face, because you are talking avatar to avatar, because there are no repercussions to speaking to the ugly avatar over there.

I find this happening in online role playing games a lot. People think that they can act like a "Homie" or a "G" because they are hiding and not showing their face. But little do they understand that not many "G's" could be found playing Runescape.

I was really disgusted when you talked about the sex going on behind you. I have seen people do this all over, whether it be World of Warcraft, Runescape, or even XboxLive. It doesn't matter if that "sexy" girl could be a fat fourty year old man who, as you pointed out, can't get a picture of "herself". Most fourteen year old boys, I have found, would rather let their penis's think for them. Which, being a fifteen year old boy, makes me wonder if I am growing up in the wrong generation.

I do wish you the best of luck with Home. I laughed throughout the article because I was talking about the idiots on Xbox Live on Gamespot and people were telling me that's the difference between the PS3 and the Xbox was the fact that people were better. I will post a link to this article for those people who actually think that.

I've always hated these online social networking things, isn't it just a way of avoiding the awkwardness that could arise with real socialising, but then I guess you could say the same thing about MSN and Facebook ... meh